This movie is about despair. Despair at the passing of a way of life. Despair at disappointed hopes and dreams. Despair at the loss of a loved one, either through death, divorce or disinterest. Knowing that going in and if you don't mind downbeat films there are some really moving performances from a cast full of legends.

Heavy with gloom there is still much too admire though Miller's prose is at times heavy and tending towards pretension. Marilyn's woozy sexuality coming through a haze of pills and booze at times still suits her character's searching and displaced loneliness.

Clark Gable accepted his part after first choice Robert Mitchum passed. Mitchum would have been great of course and publicly stated he regretted not taking the role since he and Marilyn were longtime friends, before both were famous he had worked with her first husband, and he felt that around him she would have been able to pull herself together as she had on River of No Return. This was the end of the line for Gable and his weathered appearance and weariness actually suits the role better than Mitchum's ruggedness would have at that point. The film contains some of the best acting Clark ever did.

Clift and his sad broken looks make a powerful impact and Wallach scores well too but the great Thelma Ritter is somewhat shortchanged since she disappears about halfway through the picture. Her astringent tartness would have been most welcome later in the film when the real heavy going takes place.

It's obvious that Arthur Miller was trying to say something important here, but THE MISFITS is a strange vessel to convey anything other than bitterness, distrust, emptiness, anger and pity as expressed by showcasing the empty lives of a group of disparate people trying to eke out a living in the barren wastelands of Nevada.

Just what this is all supposed to symbolize is hard to tell. It sure takes time to criss-cross the various characters who talk at length about what's bugging them and what they want from life, and then the same sort of scene takes place again but in different surroundings. It's a vicious merry-go-round of a sad state of affairs.

Not even the wonderful THELMA RITTER can inject any of her usual levity into the gloomy proceedings with an occasional wisecrack. MARILYN MONROE looks wistfully at Gable (and everyone else--almost as if she's been drugged),and this is supposed to show us how sensitive she is. To her credit, she does rise to the occasion in the dramatic finale where the men are rounding up horses and Monroe screams at them in horror when she realizes what's happening. Her near breakdown looks genuine and heartfelt...but what was her state of mind during the first part of the film? Hard to tell--she goes from happy to sad within each segment with little explanation given.

CLARK GABLE's character is no more illuminating--he seems to be playing a lazy but good-natured drifter who doesn't really know where he's going or what he wants and he gets lifeless support from MONTGOMERY CLIFT who seems to be (like Monroe) in some sort of daze most of the time. Maybe he's supposed to be sensitive too. Subtle, no? As you can see, this will never rank as one of my favorite films even though the script is by the renowned Arthur Miller and the direction is by the equally renowned John Huston who had a hard time coaxing Marilyn Monroe onto the set.

Pretentious from start to finish is the only verdict I can come up with and a difficult film to watch without losing patience.

Unfortunately, its chief distinction today is that it was the last film of Gable and Monroe.

The film is about a bunch of down-and-out and emotionally lost people who somehow come together. Marilyn Monroe arrives in Reno for a divorce and has no idea what to do with herself, so Thelma Ritter (always a great supporting actress) takes her under her wing. A bit later, they hook up with Clark Gable (an aging bachelor cowboy) and a man who has a place to rent (Eli Wallach) and they strike up a friendship during the course of an impromptu party.

After years of being on his own (he'd been married a long time ago),aging cowboy/rodeo performer Gable is tired of his tough life and seems ready to perhaps settle down with Monroe. As for Monroe, she's interested but still confused as to what she wants to do with her life. A potential relationship between the two seems to be brewing.

A bit later, as the four friends are driving down the road, they notice Montgomery Clift sitting by the phone booth in the middle of nowhere. Gable and Wallach recognize him and stop. They take Clift to the rodeo where he proceeds to get the snot knocked out of him! During both the bronco and bull rides, Monroe practically comes unhinged trying to get Clift to stop and she cries hysterically until she learns he's bruised but otherwise okay. At this point, it's pretty obvious that Monroe is quite taken with Clift...and that Monroe is very tenderhearted towards animals and Clift. In addition, over time, the extreme differences between Gable and Monroe become terribly obvious and you know this relationship is doomed. See the film for yourself to see how it all plays out in this unusual film.

As for the film, I liked it in some ways. The story was very unusual and quite original. The parallels between the five wayward people who were misfits and the horses was interesting and the story could have worked...but I couldn't help but think the power of the script was undone by a case of producers pushing too hard for "names"--big name actors to try to draw in the public as opposed to letting the story speak for itself.

I dunno, but I was surprised by Marilyn Monroe's delivery in this film. Despite zillions adoring her and some rave reviews, I think her performance was terrible--by far the worst in the film. It seems that throughout most of the film she sounded like she was impersonating someone with emphysema--as she kept breathing louder and louder and taking huge breaths in the middle of sentences. Frankly, I think she sounded like Stevie from "Malcolm in the Middle" and can't understand why she played her part that way. Perhaps all of her emotional problems were affecting her performance, as this was the last film she made before her untimely death.

As for Clark Gable, he was good in the film but seemed oddly cast. Having this aging actor play against Marilyn Monroe just didn't seem to work--the same problem Gable had in "It Happened in Naples" when he starred, just a year earlier, with Sophia Loren! You wonder why he kept agreeing to films like these. Perhaps he didn't want to acknowledge that he was nearly 60, but he just didn't allow himself to age gracefully in films like Cary Grant did.

Now I don't know about you, but I was surprised to see Clift in such a rugged role. While I know he'd taken a few similar roles in the past (such as RED RIVER and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY),but with his super-slight frame and looks such roles seemed ill-suited to him...though they seemed like good career choices in hindsight. As for me, I didn't mind his acting but just thought Clift was silly as a rodeo cowboy--especially with his refined and very non-western voice.

In fact, this is my criticism of the film--too many people just didn't seem to belong in Nevada. I think with a different cast, they could have carried off the plot a bit easier. As a result, it was a good film but an oddly surreal film at the same time--and very tough to accept. It was as if believability was unimportant and star power was the only serious concern.

Overall, an interesting experiment that's worth seeing. But, sadly, not much more.